


end of the line

by fillory



Category: The Bifrost Incident - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, Unfortunately not a fix-it fic, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 04:54:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19456774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fillory/pseuds/fillory
Summary: By some strange miracle, eighty years is eighty years.Sigyn and Loki may be trapped here together, but at least they have time.





	end of the line

By some strange miracle, eighty years is eighty years.

Sigyn expects to feel the pangs of hunger, the clench of thirst within days of linking Loki to the Ratatosk’s engine; the train hadn’t been stocked for more than three days’ journey, after all, as extravagant as those meals might have been for its wealthy passengers, and more relevantly, the dining carriages were among those Sigyn disconnected from their own when they realized what they had to do.

Even so, it’s a week before she notices that she’s experienced neither of them, thirst nor hunger, and that while every night she and Loki sleep in each other’s arms on the cold, twisted iron floor, it’s not because of fatigue. Loki’s nearness—after years, years without her at Sigyn’s side—is a comfort more potent than anything Sigyn has had in what feels like forever. She’d be a fool not to take advantage.

When Sigyn brings it up, Loki theorizes that something in the Bifrost or Yog-Sothoth’s magic has halted their physical needs. “Perhaps we’re immortals now,” she says, her accompanying laugh pained but genuine. “That would solve our world-ending conundrum, if I were here to keep the train running for eternity.”

Sigyn shudders. “No. Gods help me, my love, for I may be heartless to say it”—her voice cracks on the words—“but I don’t want you to live forever. Not like this.”

She kneels, and Loki gazes at her, lips parted. Her long hair is still tousled from the way Sigyn had braided and unbraided and ran her hands through it this morning, captivated by its tangible softness. She’s haggard—they both are, after how these recent years have gone—yet still as lovely as she was the day Sigyn met her and fell in longing with her fire, her quick wit, her sharp intelligence.

Sigyn leans forward to tuck her head into Loki’s shoulder, hiding her face. “Not even to save the world,” she whispers against Loki’s collarbone.

The eighty years they get together are far too long, but Sigyn treasures every second of them. She ages, but slowly; Loki even more so. They have eighty years together of talking, of dreaming, of fighting and making up. Of telling stories, endlessly, which twine around each other and bring the universe into their warped, bismuth-gilded prison; of doing things that make their hearts pound far faster than they probably should, considering Loki’s condition.

“I’m glad we didn’t have children,” Loki says, about thirty years in. Her face is just starting to show the lines of age. She smiles crookedly, and the look in her eyes is only the slightest bit wistful. “I can’t imagine having to share you.”

Sigyn laughs. “You say the sweetest things, my dear.” Wry. She squeezes Loki’s hand, once, and Loki squeezes back.

They discuss in teasing tones what their children’s names might have been, in a world where Odin wasn’t a fool and a tyrant and the two of them could live peacefully, painlessly ever after. Loki suggests they name one after the train. Sigyn tugs reprovingly at her braid. They start forgetting to begin their sentences with, “Wouldn’t it be awful if…” and gradually succumb to a shared fantasy, a bittersweet dream of what might have been, had their lives not been taken from them by this eldritch mistake.

For the next month, Sigyn wakes up every morning with tears in her eyes.

It’s not all bad, though. There are four years in a row that Loki doesn’t feel any pain from the line draining her blood from her heart, and those are some of the happiest years of Sigyn’s life. They renew their vows eight times, once each decade, with the luminescent rainbow of the Bifrost around them as their witness. Sixty years in, Loki’s veins are rusted black, and she’s still the most beautiful sight Sigyn has ever seen.

“I love you,” Loki says on the final day, as she has said every day of the last eighty years, as she had every day of the thirty they shared before she was sentenced to death. Even when they were fighting. Even when they couldn’t stand to look at each other, they had said it.

They don’t know for certain that this is their last day together, but Loki has run the calculations, measured the slow, labored beating of her heart, and Sigyn is confident in her prediction. She’s felt it, too: the wear of time on her bones. Her spine is tired. Her lungs don’t want to breathe any more.

“Do you think they’ll know?” she asks aloud. This isn’t the first time they’ve wondered, but it’s a comfort to say it again. The words are nearly ritual. “Do you think they’ll be warned in time to escape?”

Loki smiles. Crooked and lovely, one last time. “I’m sure of it.”

Their hands meet; their lips. They curl together like a set of parentheses, and breathe each other’s air for one final breath.

Loki’s heart beats—

And then it doesn’t.

And the gods have mercy, and Sigyn ends with her—

_And Ragnarok has arrived._

**Author's Note:**

> The Mechs: They're trapped in agony for eighty years and then die, bringing Ragnarok with them  
> Me: Yeah but what if they were happy along the way?
> 
>   
>  This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).


End file.
